Read all about it here:
CNN Report: Google Sitemaps

Seems to have been a stealthy launch – can’t see the usual furore of activity on the blog front that Google usually evokes.

The actual Google website for Sitemaps Beta is here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/

Quoting from Google:

Google Sitemaps is an experiment in web crawling. Using Sitemaps to inform and direct our crawlers, we hope to expand our coverage of the web and and speed up the discovery and addition of pages to our index. By placing a Sitemap-formatted file on your web server, you enable our crawlers to find out what pages are present and which have recently changed, and to crawl your site accordingly.

Methinks Serendipity is ahead of the wave – they have a Google Sitemaps plugin in the CVS repository. Might give it a whirl later…

Related posts:

  1. Google Webaccelerator: Standards vs Reality
  2. Beta Release and a new Project